DW: A third of Germany’s gold in Trump’s America’s hands!

With relations between Europe and US President Donald Trump strained, there are growing calls to withdraw Germany’s €164 billion gold reserves from New York.

Marie-Agnes Strach-Zimmermann, chair of the European Union’s defense committee, told German Spiegel magazine: “With global uncertainty growing, and with President Trump’s unpredictable US policies, it’s no longer justified for some 37% of Germany’s gold reserves, more than 1,230 tons, to remain in New York”.

“During the Cold War, it probably made sense to keep a large part of the national assets in the United States,” the politician from the German Liberal Free Democratic Party said in a statement quoted by the German magazine’s website on Friday.

However, the geopolitical situation has changed radically, as confidence in the credibility of transatlantic partners alone cannot replace our economic and security sovereignty.

Katharina Beck, a spokeswoman for the Green Party for finance in the German Bundestag, also stressed that gold reserves are a key pillar of stability and confidence, warning against using reserves as leverage in geopolitical disputes.

The Bundesbank gold reserves are the second largest in the world after the United States: at the end of 2024, they amounted to about 3,352 tons, a value of more than 270 billion Euros at the time.

According to the Bundesbank, more than half of the precious metal’s 1,710 tons are stored in its own vaults in Frankfurt, while 1,236 tons, or about 37% of Germany’s gold reserves, are held by the US Federal Reserve in New York, as the remaining 405 tons are held by the Bank of England in London.

Germany’s gold reserves abroad have been around for many decades: in mid-1951, Germany began to build up its first gold reserves.

The economic miracle that followed World War II led to a rapid growth in the Federal Reserves’ gold reserves.

The Federal Republic’s booming exports brought in large amounts of dollars, which were exchanged for gold at the US Federal Reserve.

In other words, there has been no transfer of gold reserves from Germany to the United States.

During the Cold War, storing gold in a safe place was part of politics at the time.

In October 2025, Federal Reserve President Joachim Nagel reiterated that there was no reason to worry about the reserves held by the Federal Reserve in New York.

The Bundesbank conducts periodic inspections and takes random samples; “It’s there, it’s authentic, it’s completely consistent with what’s on record with us,” Nagel said.

Storing German gold in different locations is also a risk diversification.

In the event of a crisis, German gold stored in New York and London could be exchanged for dollars or pounds.

Between 2013 and 2017, the Federal Reserve returned hundreds of gold bars from the New York Federal Reserve’s vaults, 300 tons, and 374 tons from the Bank of France in Paris to Germany.

In August 2017, the Federal Central Bank displayed gold bars for visitors to touch at its headquarters in front of surveillance cameras.

The central bank’s main message was: Germany’s gold reserves are real and already exist.

In a move toward greater transparency: At the end of 2015, the Bank published a list of all bullion in a publicly available document of nearly 2,400 pages.